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This article is part of a series on the politics and government of Crimea |
Republic of Crimea (within Russia) since 2014
Autonomous Republic of Crimea (within Ukraine) |
See also |
Political status of Crimea Politics of Russia Politics of Ukraine |
The only presidential elections were contested in the Republic of Crimea for the post of President of Crimea, at the time a republic within Ukraine. The office was created by the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea, the republic's unicameral parliament October 13, 1993. Elections were subsequently held on January 16, 1994 with the second round on January 30 since a two-round system was used to elect the President. The presidential elections in Crimea were one of the most important precedents of the Crimean crisis that laid the basis for the Ukrainian-Russian international relationship.
Crimea is a peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea in Eastern Europe that is almost completely surrounded by both the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov to the northeast. It is located south of the Ukrainian region of Kherson, to which it is connected by the Isthmus of Perekop, and west of the Russian region of Kuban, from which it is separated by the Strait of Kerch though linked by the Crimean Bridge. The Arabat Spit is located to the northeast, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of lagoons named Sivash from the Sea of Azov. Across the Black Sea to its west is Romania and to its south Turkey.
The President of the Republic of Crimea was the head of the state of the Republic of Crimea, Ukraine from February 16, 1994 to the time of its liquidation on March 17, 1995. The post was liquidated as it disagrees with the Constitution of Ukraine.
Ukraine, sometimes called the Ukraine, is a country in Eastern Europe. Excluding Crimea, Ukraine has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kiev. Ukrainian is the official language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religions in the country are Eastern Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism. Ukraine is currently in a territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2 (233,062 sq mi), making it the largest country entirely within Europe and the 46th largest country in the world.
The pro-Russian Yuriy Meshkov won the second round of voting with 72.9 percent of the vote. [1] [2] Some of the other candidates that showed interest, but not listed in the table below were Yevhen Isaev (Green Party of Crimea) and Natalia Vasilyeva (Sevastopol City Council deputy). The Crimean parliament refused to register the People's Movement of Ukraine's representative on November 18, 1993. [3]
Yuri Alexandrovich Meshkov is a former Crimean politician and a leader of the pro-Russian movement in Crimea. Yuriy Meshkov served as the only President of Crimea from 1994 to 1995.
The People's Movement of Ukraine is a Ukrainian centre-right political party. Often it is simply referred to as the Movement. The party under the name Rukh was an observer member of the European People's Party (EPP) until 2013.
Meshkov was able to remain in office until March 17, 1995 when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine abolished the office of president. [4] Two weeks thereafter the President of Ukraine temporarily re-subordinated the government of Crimea to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with reservation to appoint the Crimean prime-minister by the President of Ukraine. In light of that the parliament of Crimea appealed to both parliaments of Russia and Ukraine not to hurry in signing the friendship treaty without ignoring the interest of people of the peninsula.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, often simply Verkhovna Rada or just Rada, is the unicameral parliament of Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada is composed of 450 deputies, who are presided over by a chairman (speaker). The Verkhovna Rada meets in the Verkhovna Rada building in Ukraine's capital Kiev.
The President of Ukraine is the Ukrainian head of state. The president represents the nation in international relations, administers the foreign political activity of the state, conducts negotiations and concludes international treaties. The president is directly elected by the citizens of Ukraine for a five-year term of office, limited to two terms consecutively.
At first the Russian government stated that the Crimean problem is the Ukrainian internal issues, implying that there are no intentions of the Russian government to intervene. Even the First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets who arrived to Kiev to sign an international agreement between Russia and Ukraine soon after the disestablishment of the presidential post in Crimea confirmed that it will not influence the ongoing negotiations between the two neighboring countries. State Duma, nevertheless, later issued its note of concern for the negotiations with Kiev which may jeopardize the stability in the region. Soon thereafter the President of the Russian Federation announced that the friendship treaty could not be signed, while the current Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev in the context of the situation in Crimea chose the following words:
Oleg Nikolaevich Soskovets is a Soviet, Kazakh and Russian politician.
Andrey Vladimirovich Kozyrev was the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation under President Boris Yeltsin, in office from October 1991 until January 1996. In his position he was credited with developing Russia's foreign policy immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, although many in Russia have criticized him for being weak and not assertive enough in defending Russian interests in the face of the United States and NATO in places like Bosnia and Iraq. For this he took a lot of criticism from the nationalist politicians and parties. Kozyrev had graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) with a Ph.D. in history before joining the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1974, holding various positions in it before being appointed foreign minister.
“ | ...the use of direct military force might be necessary to protect our compatriots abroad. | ” |
The Crimean question first surfaced in January 1992 when on the initiative of Vladimir Lukin the Russian parliamentarians were given a draft of resolution concerning the 1954 transfer of Crimea. The resolution was composed by the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations which he headed at that time and proposed to annul the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The proposal was not addressed at that time to avoid any additional open confrontations (Civil war in Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh War, Georgian Civil War, and others). When the issue of Crimea was raised again in 1994 together with the Black Sea Fleet, Lukin stated that his main intentions were to put the government of Ukraine in front of the dilemma either to surrender the Ukrainian ports and the Fleet or deal with questioning status of the Crimea, the invalidation of which he had intentions to pass in the Russian Parliament with the before mentioned resolution.
The transfer of the Crimean Oblast in 1954 was an administrative action of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union which transferred the government of the Crimean Peninsula from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian SSR.
The Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place in the late 1980s to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by the Republic of Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, entangled themselves in a protracted, undeclared war in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting itself with Armenia and a referendum, boycotted by the Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, was held, whereby most of the voters voted in favor of independence. The demand to unify with Armenia began in a relatively peaceful manner in 1988; in the following months, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, it gradually grew into an increasingly violent conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, resulting in claims of ethnic cleansing by both sides.
The Georgian Civil War comprised inter-ethnic and intranational conflicts in the regions of South Ossetia (1988–1992) and Abkhazia (1992–1993), as well as the violent military coup d'état of December 22, 1991 – December 31, 1993, against the first democratically elected President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his subsequent uprising in an attempt to regain power (1993).
Candidates — nominating parties | Votes first round | % | Votes second round | % |
---|---|---|---|---|
Yuriy Meshkov — Bloc "Russia" | 557,226 | 38.50 | 1,040,888 | 72.92 |
Mykola Bahrov — (supported by Mejlis) | 254,042 | 17.55 | 333,243 | 23.35 |
Serhiy Shuvainykov — Russian Party of Crimea | 196,324 | 13.56 | ||
Leonid Hrach — Communist Party of Ukraine | 176,330 | 12.80 | ||
Ivan Yermakov — Ukrainian president representative in Sevastopol | 90,347 | 6.22 | ||
Volodymyr Verkoshansky — self-nomination | 14,205 | 0.98 | ||
Total | 1,288,474 | 100.00 | 1,374,131 | 100.00 |
Source: |
Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Moroz is a Ukrainian politician. He was the Speaker of Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine twice: July 2006 to September 2007, and previously in 1994 through 1998. Moroz is one of the founders and leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, which was an influential political party in Ukraine. Moroz lost Parliamentary representation when the Socialist Party of Ukraine failed to secure sufficient number of votes (2.86%) in the 2007 snap election falling 0.14% short of the 3% election threshold.
The recorded history of the Crimean Peninsula, historically known as Tauris, Taurica, and the Tauric Chersonese, begins around the 5th century BC when several Greek colonies were established along its coast. The southern coast remained Greek in culture for almost two thousand years as part of the Roman Empire, and its successor states, the Byzantine Empire, the Empire of Trebizond, and the independent Principality of Theodoro. In the 13th century, some port cities were controlled by the Venetians and by the Genovese. The Crimean interior was much less stable, enduring a long series of conquests and invasions; by the early medieval period it had been settled by Scythians (Scytho-Cimmerians), Tauri, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Kipchaks and Khazars. In the medieval period, it was acquired partly by Kievan Rus', but fell to the Mongol invasions as part of the Golden Horde. They were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, which conquered the coastal areas as well, in the 15th to 18th centuries.
The State Council of Crimea is the parliament of the Republic of Crimea. It had previously been called the 'Supreme Council of Crimea but changed its name in March 2014 following a vote by the Ukrainian parliament to dissolve the Supreme Council of Crimea. The Parliament is housed in the Parliament building in the centre of Simferopol.
The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is the single highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars in period between sessions of the Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar People.
The Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea is the head of government of the Republic of Crimea,.
The politics of Crimea today is that of the Republic of Crimea on one hand, and that of the federal city of Sevastopol on the other, within the context of the largely unrecognised annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014.
The Party "Soyuz" is a national political party of Ukraine that is mostly based in Crimea. It was registered in June 1997 under a registration number 867.
The 2010 Crimean parliamentary election were held on 31 October 2010 as a part of the general 2010 Ukrainian local elections. Unlike the previous election to the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea, they were conducted on the mixed member proportional representation system. In order to gain representation in the Parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a party or bloc had to garner at least 3 percent of the total vote. The Party of Regions won the elections with an overwhelming majority.
The constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the basic law of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a republic on the Crimean peninsula as part of Ukraine. The constitution establishes the republic's status and authority within Ukraine. It granted Crimea the right to draft a budget and manage its own property. The constitution was repealed by a disputed referendum during the 2014 Crimean crisis, after which the Republic of Crimea was established as a federal subject of Russia after the annexation of the peninsula. The Ukrainian government has refused to recognize the annexation of Crimea by Russia and still recognizes the constitution as active.
The Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, briefly SovMin, was until February 27, 2014 the executive branch of government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a republic within southern Ukraine. The Council of Ministers derived its authority from the Constitution and laws of Ukraine and normative acts of the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea which bring them into its competency.
Verkhovna Rada of Crimea or the Supreme Council of Crimea, officially the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was a Ukrainian legislative body of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea before the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014.
The first government headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk was created in Ukraine on 27 February 2014 in the aftermath of the Ukrainian revolution. The cabinet was formed as a coalition of the parties Batkivschyna, UDAR and Svoboda and the parliamentary factions Economic Development and Sovereign European Ukraine and other independent MPs. On 24 July 2014, UDAR and Svoboda and 19 independent MPs had exited from the coalition to pave the way for the early parliamentary elections of late October 2014. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk announced his resignation the same day, but the Verkhovna Rada declined his resignation on 31 July 2014.
The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is, de jure, an autonomous republic of Ukraine encompassing most of Crimea, though, de facto, it was annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014.
The 2014 Ukrainian local elections took place on 25 May 2014, four years after the conclusion of the last local elections, which took place in October 2010. The elections occurred during the political crisis in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.
The Crimean Peninsula was annexed from Ukraine by the Russian Federation in February–March 2014 and since then has been administered as two Russian federal subjects—the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol. The annexation followed a military intervention by Russia in Crimea that took place in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and was part of wider unrest across southern and eastern Ukraine.
For Peace and Stability was a Ukrainian parliamentary faction in its national parliament Verkhovna Rada from 2 July 2014 till 27 November 2014. The group included 34 MPs.
Creating Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine – the documents, signed on 21 February 2014 by the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and the leaders of the parliamentary opposition under the mediation of the European Union and the Russian Federation. The signing of the Agreement was intended to stop the mass bloodshed in Kiev and to end the sharp political crisis, which began in November 2013 in connection with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to suspend the process of signing the Association agreement with the European Union.